With venomous voices of the GOP dominating dialogue, President Obama used his final State of the Union message to battle against intolerance, anger, and pessimism.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have conducted a remarkably substantive debate on a range of issues, including how to help U.S. workers and regulate Wall Street.
How to cut through the entitlement or ambivalence of college students and get them to see the connections between economics, ethics, inequality, and oppression?
Andrew Hartman's argument is that while “cultural conflict persists,” it has come to partake of a highly ironic flavor—and continues to ignore economic inequality.
Only fearlessness will flip the politics of guns. Republicans can't forever embrace an irrational absolutism that leaves the country powerless before carnage.
The Republican presidential race is one of the most fascinating political brawls in years. It’s about to hit full stride, and I can’t resist kibitzing.
The concept of the rule of law helps provide a broader framework that makes sense of the critics and the defenders of the prolife movement after Colorado Springs.
The environmental movement gets criticized for neglecting social and economic injustice. But California is seeking to align climate and economic policy-making.
The debates we have witnessed have provided an incontestable answer to the question of which party embraces the United States of Now in all of its raucous diversity.
For the men I met with for a biweekly seminar at a mid-level security prison, the biblical struggle with Satan is an everyday affair, expressed in just those terms.
I’d ask a favor from these candidates: Please stop saying how Christian you are unless you show a few signs of understanding the social obligations the word imposes.
If we know for a fact more gun restrictions mean fewer gun-related deaths, why are the politics so complicated—even after Sandy Hook, Aurora, and San Bernardino?
In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s interpretation of race in America, hope doesn't fit into the narrative—something James Baldwin, to whom he's compared, wouldn't leave out.
Donald's Trump’s call for a religious test for entry to our country has arisen from the ongoing exploitation of anti-Muslim feeling for political purposes.
What fascinates Maraniss about Detroit more than its ruin is how central its story is to the broader course of U.S. history—Motown, the local Mob, the auto industry.
'Go Set Watchman' shows that though Atticus Finch defended a black man in court, he was still a man of his time—on the white citizens council, resisting integration.
It seems that Bernie Sanders does not share F.D.R.’s vision entirely. In fact, he usually leaves out a key component of New Deal Liberalism: the part about liberty.
Current students are taught by lay people. Our teachers were Benedictine monks, and teaching only begins to describe the role those virtuous men played in our lives.
If Janet Yellen decides to solve the problem of low lending interest by raising rates, does this benefit banks, government, hedge-fund managers, or the rest of us?
Congress needs to show that though voters have given the presidency and control of Congress to different parties, we're capable of being a functional democracy.
White working-class voters have been key to the GOP coalition. You'd think the party's presidential candidates would want to respond to the crisis they're facing.
It was amazing to hear Republican candidate Chris Christie speak words that should be a central principle of society: "There but for the grace of God go I."
Paul Ryan has always wanted to be several things at once, which makes for a hard balancing act. He knows his faith teaches compassion, but he's also an ideologue.
As a result of a recent vogue for feeling culturally embattled, the word “Christian” now is seen less as identifying an ethic, and more as identifying a demographic.
His withdrawal speech sounded like an announcement speech, and it captured the aching ambivalence of Joe Biden. So why didn’t he run the race he wanted to join?
John Norris's new biography of Pulitzer prize-winning political journalist (and Commonweal Catholic) Mary McGrory is engaging, carefully researched, and sympathetic.
Trump speaks clearly to a group that sociologist Donald Warren identified in 1976 as “Middle American Radicals,” who think the middle class is seriously neglected.
Standing in that endless, pointless line, I realized, wasn’t communicating our affection for the pope but our acceptance of the authority of the security state.
While Franzen’s natural mode as writer is one of confident high spirits, in "Purity" his view of people is steeped in pessimism, and his characters are miserable.
We won't act unless political parties that block action lose their majorities. Yes, I mean a Republican Party that's aligned itself with the interests of gun makers.
Readers write to petition for women writers, praise Luke Timothy Johnson's essay on Thomas Merton, take issue with Andrew Bacevich, and clarify education goals.
Given the deep hostility to Obama in the Republican Party, and given the tea party revolt, it’s doubtful that any Republican would have found it easy to deliver.
